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Project Server Service Pack 1–Two handy SharePoint Features

With the introduction of Service Pack 1 for Project Server and SharePoint in late June, in addition to the raft of bug fixes, a number of new features were included. The Project product team has as usual, done a diligent job in communicating these changes and I am not going to recap what they have already covered. Instead I am going to look at two new features of SharePoint that will no doubt benefit users and administrators of Project Server.

Site Recycle Bin

With WSS 3.0, Microsoft introduced a recycle bin capability that allowed items that had previously been deleted accidently to be captured in a recycle bin, allowing users, or site collection administrators to restore those items if required. Whilst the recycle bin captured pretty much everything SharePoint could throw at it, one glaring omission was that it couldn’t capture sites natively. With the introduction of SharePoint 2010 SP1, all sites that are deleted via Site Actions> Delete Site are now captured in the Site Collection Recycle Bin, allowing site collection administrators to recover any site deleted accidently.

When I first heard of this feature I was keen to see how Project Server would work with it. As you are aware, Project Server allows you to save backups of various settings into the Archive database via a scheduled or administrative backup. However, this backup does not include the workspaces. Typically if you accidently delete a workspace, you need to do a database restore and recover the site accidently deleted. So when I heard this feature was coming, I was pleased to know there was a quick and convenient option to restore the sites should the need arise.

However, it appears there is a Project Server related ‘gotcha’ with this feature. If you choose to delete a site via the Server Settings > Delete Enterprise Objects of Project Server by checking the ‘Delete the associated Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Sites?’ option, the site will not captured in the Site Collection Recycle Bin.

Only those sites that are deleted via the Project Workspaces Site Actions > Delete Site option are. I am not sure why this is the case, but based on this I would suggest that any administrators that use the Delete Enterprise Objects functionality and usually choose to delete the associated workspace at the time of deletion choose not to check the ‘Delete the associated Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Sites?’ option and instead manually delete the site, giving an option to restore from the recycle bin should it be needed.

Storage Metrics

The second feature I wanted to look at was is called Storage Metrics This feature provides an overview of the storage being used by the sites and folders within a Site Collection allowing an administrator to see which sites are storing too much data within a site or if you are using quotas, which sites need archiving to ensure the quota is not breached.

I can personally think of several customers that would benefit from the ability to easily see just how big certain project’s workspaces are becoming.